Marriage Counseling & Couples Therapy

Why do most couples come for marriage counseling or couples counseling?

Most couples come to couples counseling or marriage counseling because they feel a loss of connection and worry they have fallen out of love. They are having problems communicating. Many of them despair saying, “I think my partner is just selfish.” Couples come to therapy because they are repeating negative cycles of criticism and withdrawal. Deep worries about being abandoned or controlled are pulling them apart. Relationship counseling can help stop the demand-withdraw cycle. Many couples are constantly fighting about sex or have shut down intimacy completely.

As couples therapists, we know it can be difficult to admit the need for marital help. Many couples feel shame about their lack of getting along. They worry that couples counseling will uncover that they are incompatible. Unfortunately, this anxiety often keeps them pretending for 6 years (says the research) before getting the help in marital therapy that would make them happy again.

Stages of Relationship that need Couples Counseling

Early relationship – You are in a committed relationship and need skills communicating and understanding each other’s expectations.

Detachment – One or both of you might have lost that “in-love” feeling. You wonder if you have nothing in common anymore and have started to avoid each other. There’s a lack of affection and sex.

Betrayal – Cheating, emotional affairs, or online infidelity, or suspicious behavior like hiding cell phones/texts/passwords might happen at any stage. And while always a crisis that creates real trust issues, this behavior is often a cry for help in the relationship.

Perilous– Gottman research* says these four symptoms indicate you are close to a break-up/divorce:

criticism (like, “I think I just found a selfish person”)

contempt (includes name-calling)

defensiveness (no longer willing to try)

stonewalling (avoiding and ignoring)

Typical Couple Complaints:

“I’m not sure I ever really loved my partner.”

“My husband doesn’t talk to me anymore.”

“My spouse never wants to have sex.”

“She nags about household chores and doesn’t respect my need for time to myself.”

“He never puts down his phone.” or “She’s on Facebook every night.”

“My partner cheated, and they’re okay but I am still suffering with trust issues.”

“I can’t stand that our kids are growing up hearing us always fighting and arguing.”

We can help! There’s hope! The good news is we have never felt like we have seen a couple without a pathway through to hope. While couples have only seen up close a few relationships in adulthood and one in childhood (maybe a few, if your parents remarried), our professional couple’s counselors have seen thousands of relationships and marriages. We know that relationships follow patterns. Our couples counselors use this life-changing information to help you understand how to stop your negative, repetitive cycles and feel connected again. With relationship therapy you can learn to use the love language your partner understands.

Benefits of Couples Counseling

The benefits of couples counseling is helping you discover how to change the negative cycles today! We’ve seen couples on the brink of divorce – radically change – and feel in-love again. And we will help your partner see their part too! Here’s what to expect from couples counseling:

If you don’t live near one of our centers, travel often or just seek the convenience of online counseling help – we offer the best telehealth marriage/couples counseling for the state of North Carolina.

Experience is a major factor. Couples have only seen up close a few relationships in adulthood and one in childhood (or a few if your parents remarried.) Couple’s counselors have seen thousands of marriages and partnership as couple’s therapists, we know that relationships follow patterns. Awakenings’s couple therapists have studied the patterns of attachment and know which are better for happiness and which ones result in divorce or dissolution. At Awakenings, our marriage counseling has saved many couples from the profound disruption of divorce.

Childhood gives couples an innate blueprint for marriage/long term relationships. Becoming conscious of relationship schemas gives you the power of choice for better ways to relate. Marriage counseling or couple’s counseling will show each partner the necessary steps to have a working, functional relationship – in practical daily living, in friendship, and in sex. Couple’s therapy alleviates the power struggle and quickly gets you connected intimately and emotionally. We coach each of you to understand your part in the difficulties.

My husband is always working and never spends time with me. He doesn’t think anything is wrong between us and won’t consider couple’s therapy. Conversely, my wife is absorbed in the children with no energy left over for time together or time in the bedroom. She is always complaining about my contribution.

You should come to couple’s therapy for an initial session by yourself! We can help you formulate a better way to approach your spouse with the idea of marriage counseling. We help you separate unrealistic expectations from realistic and rightful needs. Then, we coach you on how to request couple’s counseling without criticism and blame.

We rarely have a partner decide not to enter couple’s therapy once they see we are impartial. We know it’s never one person’s fault.

We tried marital therapy once before and my husband felt like he was ganged up on and doesn’t want to try again.

A poor therapist-client match can cause a person to lose hope about engaging in therapy, which is one of our most powerful instruments for marital change.

Our individual therapists at Awakenings will gladly spend 15 minutes by phone talking with your husband about his prior experience. It might also be good to schedule a solo initial session for him and one of our therapists, to have a new and better experience.

While therapists sometimes throw their weight against a destructive dynamic in a marriage, both partners should feel that they are treated with dignity and compassion. Sometimes therapy goes poorly because the therapist doesn’t stay neutral; other times, the personality fit isn’t comfortable.

My wife has just told me that she doesn’t feel in love with me anymore. Should I try therapy or call a lawyer?

Feelings of being in love wax and wane during a marriage. Your wife is probably feeling hopeless about those early romantic feelings coming back and scared too about what this means for the future. While we can’t say what she may want, if you want this marriage, it’s time to start fighting for it.

Disillusioned couples often find a new path to deeper understanding and stronger bonds through therapy, even in the midst of desperate times. You can often change the couple patterns, even if she does not agree to come to therapy herself.

I just found out my husband is having an affair. We have children and I’m a stay-at-home mom. I can’t believe this is happening. I want to leave him, but I feel trapped.

Sexual fidelity is a sacred bond between two people and upon first hearing that it’s been broken, you might feel like it’s the end of the world as you know it. It’s normal to be enraged, hurt and in shock.

Affairs are complicated. Most everyone has said, “I would end the marriage if my partner had an affair,” and then post-affair, feels weak for wishing that the marriage could be healed. While terribly hurtful, many marriages do survive affairs, grow, and become better once the couple understands the reasons that the affair occurred.

Getting experienced help fast is the best way to find some meaning in this crisis. Therapy will offer you both a safe place to be angry, talk about why it happened, and figure out if you want the marriage to continue. Trust is regained through intimacy rather than merely depending on future vigilance.

The children have grown up and left. I now see that our marriage is dead. I want to be with someone for the last years of my life who cares about me.

Philosopher Peter Koestenbaum says, “plan to have two marriages in every lifetime, sometimes to the same person.”

Minimally, you will want to understand the ways that you contributed to the marriage’s deadening so that you can keep from repeating the same mistakes. If we have not changed, we often find ourselves in a second marriage that mimics the first. It is difficult to even be attracted to someone more mature emotionally than ourselves and unlikely for that more evolved person to be attracted to us. Sometimes we have matured, our spouse refuses to shift, and the marriage becomes intolerable.

Whether you ought to stay married or leave a marriage is up to you, but therapy can help you clarify your thoughts in the process.

Most of our patients receive some benefit from their insurance company. Ask your insurance carrier what benefits you have for out-of-network providers for outpatient mental or behavioral health services.